'I'm so glad you came to us,' the silhouette said to Jones. 'Barely anyone uses general practitioners for this kind of thing. Not nowadays anyway.' 'Well, I heard about what you were looking for and thought “fuck it”.' Jones leant back in his chair. 'I may be dying, but it ain't an emergency.' The doctor's office hummed in darkness. Where ten years before it'd be off-white walls and harsh, crisp lighting, the décor had evolved with the profession. A lamp stood on the practitioner's desk. It had been angled towards Jones, leaving nothing but outlines of the doctor's shadow. The only visual trace left by the doctor was a thick tendril of cigar smoke, which danced over the lamplight. 'Yes, well,' said the doctor after a pause. 'The problem is, people get caught up in the celebrity of the whole thing. Why get your insulin from the GP—why give them a termination license, when you can wait in line to give it to your favourite superstar?' 'Like doctor Koch,' said Jones. 'Yes, like Dr. Koch. He has more kill points—sorry, termination licenses—than he knows what to do with. Making a spectacle of the terminations like he does too, it means there's a steady stream of fans ready to plump up his license number.' 'Yeah.' 'You know there's people who refuse antibiotics, who let wounds decay and rot, just so they'll be rushed to a hospital on the off chance he'll treat them? They're that desperate to help his score. His work rota's plastered all over online. So people can co-ordinate their flirtations with mortality.' 'Fucking crazy world,' said Jones. Wouldn't the practitioner just get to the point? Jones shifted in his seat slightly, moving against the sharp pain carving through his right side. 'So like, how do we certify it so you get a kill license—termination thingy—whatever. How in danger does my life have to be?'
'How long since your last dialysis?' 'Six days.' Jones grimaced. 'Must be rather uncomfortable.' Another puff of smoke billowed over the lamplight. 'You bet.' 'Well, give it another forty eight hours. I'll make sure nurse who verifies licenses is around. You should be sick enough by then that we won't need theatrics.' 'Sound,' said Jones. 'And I get 10k, yeah? Wired into my bank the same day?' 'Of course.'
'Before I go,' continued Jones, 'if you don't mind me asking. What are you gonna use the termination license for? Who you got it in for?' The doctor sighed, his chest croaking. 'Oh, I'm not paying for this license for anything so puerile as revenge or wrath. No. This is purely a career move. An investment to get my foot up the ladder.' 'How do you mean?' 'That doesn't matter.' Jones smiled, rising out of the dark wood chair. 'Thanks for your time.' 'Thank you,' said the doctor. And, as Jones approached the office door: 'Jones? Whatever you do, don't get so ill you need to go to the hospital. I'm not losing another one to those bureaucratic pricks.' Jones nodded.

Two days later, Jones stumbled into the GP's office. He didn't know who to ask for—thanks to the secrecy of the previous meeting. Regardless, the nurse took him into one of the treatment offices, where he waited next to the dialysis machine. The doctor, obscured by a face mask, hooked him up. Drained all the poison out. Afterwards, they shook hands. Jones found a tidy ten grand sitting in his account within an hour.

Another day later, and Jones found himself stopping in front of a newspaper headline. 'DR KOCH TERMINATED,' read the main text. The sub-heading: 'Killer Unknown Doctor with Termination License.' A while later, Jones saw his pseudo-saviour on the news. About to take up a new position—at Koch's own hospital. Jones smacked his head, both impressed and surprised. Now it had been executed, the GP's plan seemed so simple. See—since the introduction of Eye for an eye inversion laws, doctors had become creatures of clout; their hippocratic oath evolved into a strange new honour system. Not unlike, many commentators had been quick to point out, organised crime syndicates. Now, if you're a young aspiring doctor, you have two options. You can wait, hanging on the whims of a vast administrative bureaucracy to get your foot in the door at a hospital—to get a chance to really rack up kill points. Or you could get crafty. Knock off a leading surgeon—hell, why not the leading surgeon? Instantly you're famous. In demand. People want to see what you'll do with more kill points. Of course a hospital will hire you then.

Jones found himself smiling as his mind whirred. The pain in his kidneys already had returned: another dialysis would be needed tomorrow. And he wondered just how hard it would be. To find another unknown GP in need of a little help.